Fade
by Lady Emily
Summary: *IT* Beverly is afraid of losing the Losers. **Book based. Moved from what used to be the 'Stephen King' category.**


Summary: Beverly is afraid of losing the Losers.

Disclaimer: I do not own and am not making any profit from the use of these characters.

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Hands shaking, Beverly Rogan picked up the telephone. She knew it was late, nearly midnight, but the panic had seized her so suddenly... She dialed the nearly illegible number on the scrap of paper in her hand. The paper was white and crisp, less than two weeks old, and yet the ink looked like a relic of centuries- faded, hazy, uncertain. To tell the truth, she was starting to feel that way herself.

After several rings the phone was answered by a drowsy voice. The unfamiliarity of it scared her. "Mike?"

"Yes..." answered the voice. It was searching itself, she knew. Trying to place _her._ "Bev? Beverly... I'm sorry. What's up?"

"Mike," she said again, as if repeating his name would make her remember him, his courage, his smile... his _friendship_. She tried to stay nonchalant. "I'm sorry for calling so late, I just wanted to check up on your..."

He had been in the hospital, hadn't he? With a broken arm? No, that wasn't it. Something had happened to him, she thought desperately. But what?

Mike, sensing her recollection difficulties (perhaps because he was having some of his own), forced a friendly chuckle. "My leg?" he finished. "It's healing up nicely. They let me out yesterday."

"Oh, good." Beverly said, somewhat distractedly. She was trying hard to remember exactly how Mike had hurt his leg. In a... rock fight? No, that was ridiculous. It had been Bowers. Henry Bowers had attacked him, of course. In the library. She felt triumphant at reclaiming this little piece of information and that scared her too. "Mike, I'm forgetting so fast." she admitted quietly. She looked at the scrap of paper with his phone number on it. The number seemed to have faded even more since she'd looked at it to dial and she felt tears building up behind her eyes. "I'm forgetting what happened last week. And... and your phone number is starting to disappear!" With this near-hysterical statement the tears did start to drop.

"I know." Mike said. "Yours too. I've got an address book with six names and phone numbers slowly vanishing before my eyes... It scares me too, Bev. I talked to Richie just a few days ago. We couldn't even remember Stan's last name."

Beverly's brow furrowed. "It was... he was Jewish..." she began.

"Uris." Mike said. "But he's fading fast. I tried to... to write this stuff down. But everything just disappears, no matter how hard I try to hold on. If you call again next month I probably won't remember you at all. Then again, you'll have forgotten too." The watery quality of his voice told Beverly that he too was on the verge of tears.

"No." she pleaded. "How can we forget? How can something so amazing, something we shared, we loved so strongly...?"

"We killed It." Mike said simply. "We killed It, but It was what held us together."

"Pennywise." Beverly whispered, trying to call up an image of that bastard clown with his -her?- ridiculous pom-poms and silvery eyes, but found herself almost unable to believe something so ludicrous had even existed at all. She couldn't remember if the pom-poms were pink or orange. "Oh, Mike, I wanted it to be over, but I didn't want it _all_ to be over!" The nightmare was over. The monster was dead, but now her childhood, the dearest friends she would ever have... they were slipping away too.

"I know, Bevvie. It's... I don't think there's anything we can do." He tried to find a bright side. "At least you've still got Ben, haven't you?"

Beverly peered through the open bedroom door where Ben Hanscom was asleep on his own couch, having willingly given up his bed to her while she was staying in his apartment. "Yes, for the time being." she murmured with a bittersweet smile. "But even with him right here, the connection's still not... not like it used to be. Like, I forget how I met him, Mike. And what was that nickname Richie used to call him?"

Mike paused for a moment, then laughed. "'Haystack'." he said. "It was 'Haystack', after that wrestler."

Beverly laughed too, tears still streaming down her face and dripping onto the pillow, forgetting the childhood nickname even as she vowed to remember it. "Oh, Mike, I wish we didn't have to let everything go."

Mike cleared his throat solemnly. "Me too. But if it makes you feel any better, remember how we had forgotten all about each other, but once we were back together we loved each other just like we used to?"

Beverly nodded wordlessly into the phone, not remembering any such thing.

"I think," Mike continued. "That if we should ever meet again we'll know, we'll know it in our hearts. And even if we don't, the love is still there, under everything, and someday..." his voice cracked. After a pause he finished, "That's what I like to think, anyway."

Beverly blotted her watering eyes with the sleeve of her nightgown. "Thanks, Mike." she said. "I love you."

"I love you too Bev." he said, with feeling. "I wish I could say I'll never forget you."

"Me too." she whispered. "Good night, Mike."

"Good night." And though neither said it, it sounded like a final goodbye.

Beverly hung up the phone and fell back against the pillows, feeling slightly more reassured. Her movement sent Mike's phone number fluttering from the nightstand to the floor, and she leaned out to pick it up. The panic returned as she retrieved what seemed to be a blank paper, but with a closer look she found the ghost of Mike's name and number on one side. Knowing it was futile, but unable to do otherwise, she dug a pencil out of her purse and traced the faint lines, once, twice, three times, until they were good and dark.

She flipped the paper over and wrote her own name.

**Bev.**

Scary how reassuring her own name looked to her. She was one of their little club. The Losers. Would she lose touch of herself just as she was losing Mike?

**Mike.**

She entered his name carefully right under her own. Then two more.

**Ben.**

**Stan.**

There were three more. _We were seven_, she thought... Ah, but of course. Big Bill. As she wrote down his name she tried to recall everything she could about him. Bill was their leader, and she had loved him. He had red hair, like hers, she remembered. He spoke with that horrible stutter... or was it a lisp? And he was tall, and so strong... mostly. She remembered a figure in a bloodstained rain slicker and shuddered.

**Bill.**

Mike had mentioned one of the others...

**Richie.**

She couldn't remember his last name, but Mike's conversation had reminded her of Trashmouth. She smiled at the nickname- Richie had never been able to keep his mouth shut. He was always cracking jokes, Richie was, but he came through when it really mattered. (_Chud...)_ He did... impressions. No, voices. The Southern gentleman. The Irish cop. Yes, voices.

She looked at her list. Only six. Which one of her beloved friends was she missing...?

Blood, she remembered suddenly. She was in the dark and there was blood all over her, warm, pumping blood that was not her own and she was screaming, trying to use her shirt, her own body, to stop the river of slick black blood running from the stump of Eddie's missing-

**EDDIE.**

She wrote quickly, in case she lost him once more. Eddie with his aspirator and warm smile who was so strong and so defiant that it was a wonder his fragile body could keep up with his brave spirit. She gasped- how could she have forgotten him, her first lover? For a second and a second only she would swear she remembered everything about him, from his great sense of direction to his overbearing mother to his reluctance to hurt her then, her first time, in the tunnels.

The tears which had stopped minutes ago came rushing back as she remembered cradling his head in her lap as his life blood seeped through her fingers. She remembered him smiling, telling Richie for the last time to_ stop calling me 'Eds'_, and then lying perfectly still, warm and gentle to the end, and a fresh wave of sobs wracked her body. She saw herself closing his eyes, clutching his mutilated but never frightening corpse, this was Eddie, he was hers, he was theirs...

She had not heard Ben awaken but he suddenly appeared at her side, his image wavy and blurry through her tears. He knelt by the bedside and took her in his arms. "A nightmare, Bevvie?" he whispered. God knew they all had them.

She shook her head and tears leaked into his shirt. "Eddie." she wept.

Bewildered, Ben rubbed her back. The piece of paper on the nightstand caught his eye. In Beverly's urgent, dark writing:

**Bev.**

**Mike.**

**Ben.**

**Stan.**

**Bill.**

**Richie.**

**EDDIE.**

Tears began to form in his own eyes as well.

"We'll forget them all..." Beverly cried into his shoulder. But as her face pressed into his warmth she felt reassured. Ben was there, would be there. He was the only one she could be sure would be there in the morning, and she wept for all the others.

Ben wanted to deny this, but if we was honest with himself he doubted he'd be able to name the seven if he turned the paper over. _(Ben, Bev, Mike, Eddie... Bill?) "_Maybe it's better this way." he suggested solemnly, and he held her and they cried and as the hour grew late their eyes became dry and sticky and their breathing slowed and they fell against the pillows, tangled together and sleeping almost peacefully.

And silently, as they slept, the pencil marks sank into the paper as surely as downtown Derry had sunk into the Canal less than two weeks before.

**Bev.**

Mike.

**Ben.**

Stan.

Bill.

Richie.

EDDIE.

...

**Bev.**

_Mike._

**Ben.**

_Stan._

_Bill._

_Richie._

_EDDIE._

...

**Bev.**

**Ben.**

...

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A/N: I hated how the Losers forgot each other in the end... so sad. Anyway, this is a new fandom for me, so please drop me a line to tell me what you think. Thanks for reading!


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